Jeez ! I'm glad I live in an area where there are no Brits within many miles !
No problems around here with the French community, everyone seems to get on well as the recent Fête des Voisins proved.
I know what Chris means. I've had my feet on the ground in this village since '72 and there is a constant stream of events, rumours, complaints etc relating to fosse, boundary and rights of way issues. Many locals seem to be obsessed with fosses. One neighbour of mine approached me recently to tell me he suspected that a waste pipe from my maison secondaire was leaking WC waste into a local ditch- which it isn't. He's a member of a family from whom I bought that house 45 years ago and he's been trying to buy it back again for ever since. As soon as a price is mentioned he starts telling me how awaful the house is, it's not worth anything because it needs so much work that I would have to pay him to take the house off my hands etc. I then ask him why he wants it if it's so awful! He just doesn't want to pay more than the 2k euros I paid for it in '72! He's so tight that in his own adjoining house there is no loo or bathroom and he and his wife have to walk for 30 metres to use a bathroom in a dependence. There is some rough ground outside the front door and he loves driving his car or his cousin's tractor over it to make a mess in the mud and there's a little game going on with some large rocks I have installed to prevent this. I have a Plan B which I intend to implement after he leaves when the summer is finished. Meanwhile all over the village there are boundary wars, overhanging tree problems, barking dog issues. In an adjoining village a Frenchman I know had an out and out war with his English neighbour to the extent that the Brit got fed up and left. Not far away a Brit friend is in war with his ex gendarme neighbour about unauthorised alterations the latter did to a protected mediaeval waterway; the local agencies just don't want to take on the ex gendarme. My friend even had his car vandalised by somebody. It's like the wild west here in the Monts d'Arree.
Blimey, sounds pretty grim Chris.
What do you mean about the 'leaking fosse septique...' etc ?
We have already encountered this expat group who relish the failure and hardships of others.Slowly weasel their way into unsuspecting lives masked as friends.Then set about disrupting new relationships with locals. For example leaking at fosse septique then trying to get husband on his own. No I would rather not earn extra and be content with basics if thats what it means.
I'm afraid I had to throw in the towel, I had four years of it and couldn't take any more.
For too long. I don't know how you cope.
I'm past all that.
We seem to have very similar situations. It really knocks your self esteem.
Same for me, but without the change.
Cristina Life can be hard, emotionally wherever you are but if you are a city
girl who is happy meeting friends for coffee perhaps Rouen is not the ideal
place to meet friends.
Perhaps set a goal to move further south....towards Langaudoc or
my region where there is the culture of wine? Take a wine course?
You can always return to teaching if you take another road.
Never forget that the world is full of negativity and negative people
always remember that you need to look above and beyond these people.
You can only find happiness in the art of being positive and find new aspects
of work and recreation to focus.
New faces, new voices....new people....new work.
I have the same problem, but the reminders are deliberate!
I know exactly how you feel, this is my situation too. I have an AE activity and do teaching work as and when and am not sure that I could go back in terms of work etc
I did not know about the TAP scheme but at the moment I really need something that pays well and I find that teaching does not, although this does depend on where you live.
I'm in the Loiret between Orleans and Fontainebleau.
"and how unfair it seems that everyone else seems to get ahead except us."...
I can assure you there are many people in the same boat if not worse. We went through a similar situation about 25 years ago and were rock-bottom but we kept plugging away and things got better.
I think this is very sound advice from Abigail. Sometimes, when things go downhill a bit, it is very tempting to assume that it's all much better some place else. But often it IS really just a case of sitting down and working out a concept. Becoming inactive and passively fed up will unfortunately only make things worse.
Ask yourself what you like to do, what you CAN do and perhaps look around for opportunities. I realise that as ex-pats, we do tend to gravitate to other Brits / Americans or whatever, but through those groups, you can still make contact with local people who can then share ideas or give you some tips.
Of course if the big city really is essential for you - I'm sure Paris ahs a lot to offer...
In our village a few ladies from the large Brit expat contingent have offered to give free English conversational experience to local children but the school staff and locals seem completely disinterested. They prefer to teach them their own quite bad version of English complete with heavy French accents. My own daughter was born here and speaks French and English but I must admit she has a French accent. In fact it's a rather nice one but she transposes words quite frequently like car black etc.
As a qualified TEFL teacher before I arrived here three years ago I was offered work at a CCI nearby…but even that was vacataire. Unfortunately, when I got here, I was told my French was not good enough to teach English to beginners, and was promised a more advanced class that never materialised.
Last year, when the school Wednesday change came in, our commune was looking for volunteers for TAPS. I volunteered and never even had the courtesy of a reply (our commune is tiny and we know the mayor).
I am now dogsitting and I look at it as better for my state of mind overall.
You are lucky to be in the primary schools - is it to teach English? I had CDD's in primary schools for about 8 years but now they no longer take people from the exterior, they sacked all the CDDs in both the departments I worked for.
Emily, that's fantastic that you finally will get a CDD - things take so much longer out here than they did in the UK - to achieve. I sometimes remind myself that one of those (overnight famous) pianists from the Buena Vista social club (!) from Cuba, said that they would never have become so good at the piano if they hadn't lived in their circumstances of, sometimes dire poverty.
We know what it's like now to live on the fringes. I find it difficult when I hear of French people with access to 'careers' that I cannot at the moment break into, when I know that that was possible for me back in the UK, so yes, it's hard being alongside CDI French. Yes, if you have kids here then for them in any case, it's worth persevering for a contract. Will it be a full-time CDD in September?